


A Soul is a Torturous Thing

by koalaboy



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Demons, Demon Marvin, M/M, literally no one asked for this but here it is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 04:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14252817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalaboy/pseuds/koalaboy
Summary: Marvin is a demon who has walked the Earth for millions of years. His sole purpose is to cover up demonic influence, but he soon finds that all great events of destruction in human history are not by the hand of the devil, but by humanity themselves. Set in the 80's in New York City, Marvin meets Whizzer - a human whose anger and feelings of abandonment towards God mirrors his own. Now Marvin must walk the line between damning or saving Whizzer's soul and, worse still, the AIDS epidemic begins.





	1. First Impressions

While uncommon for a demon to fall in love with a human, it was not impossible. It was how men discovered heavenly creations such as music and poetry; the fallen angels had shared these with them. This was not a hatred as with Eve and the Serpent, nor a curiosity like Molech and his worshippers. It was, in and of itself, a contradictory notion for the third of angels who fell along with Lucifer, but one that existed nonetheless.

Mahrviel, who had walked the Earth along with man for as long as they had occupied it, was tasked with masking demonic influence on Earth as that of the humans’ own decisions. Though he had scoured the Titanic, searched all those that stood by the sides of Hitler, and trailed humanity’s most devastating events, he could find no demonic part in it. While this made his job incredibly simple, it left him with a realization he had already unintentionally stumble upon the moment he stood up to his Creator: man did not need the help of devils to bring upon themselves great horror and destruction.  Despite all his jealousy Mahrviel, who had adopted the name Marvin among the later centuries, discovered great loneliness in these creatures, too. Like him, they questioned their Creator, yearned for his love, and often found themselves abandoned by him.

He finds his own emotions mirrored in a man on a bench in the ramble one night. New York City’s central park at night was filled with gay men, each and every one of them an outcast like Marvin. He found himself at home amongst them and wandered the paths at night. He can hear their quiet moans and whispers as they fornicate ceaselessly – expressing what little they could in the face of such false claims made by their religious leaders. The man is cold, huddling into his brown leather coat, and he smells of alcohol. Marvin recognizes the stench of semen on his breath and tilts his head in curiosity. The man looks up at the sky and asks his Creator a question – why have you made my family, my friends, this world, hate me so much?

“God is not one to talk back, I’m afraid,” Marvin says. When he speaks his breath is not hot and steam doesn’t cloud his strong features. Demons ran extremely cold, hence the need for such large amounts of fire in hell. The word ‘God’ tastes bitter in his mouth and he resists the urge to spit the bitterness out on to the grass

“How did you know I was talking to him?” the man asks.

Marvin approaches him and takes his hand out of its pocket to point to the sky, “No other reason to look up at the sky with such frustration.”

“It’s late out. For a married man,” he remarks.

Marvin gazes down at the ring he wore – something which shielded him from the watch of Angels.

“I’m Marvin,” he says, taking a seat beside the other and stretching out his hand.

“Whizzer,” the man replies, gripping his hand firmly.

Marvin gets the sense that not a lot of men had asked Whizzer for his name by the way his cheeks blushed when he said it.

“What did you ask?”

“Hmm?” Whizzer hums, far too captivated with Marvin to really be paying attention to his words.

Marvin points to the sky again, “What did you ask?”

“Oh. I want a pony for Hannukah,” Whizzer laughs.

Marvin wants to place his hands upon the other and say: ‘I have watched your ancestors build pyramids with dirty water and dry bread in their stomachs, I have heard their victorious cries as they were freed, I have smelt their bodies as they toiled once again, and I have felt their endurance as they travelled across the seas to America to give birth to you. You are a child of lashes and famine and triumph. I have met your people as they died and I have walked beside them as they lived. You are standing on the backs of homosexuals, of bisexuals, of those with no gender and with two. Why is it you pity yourself? Why is it you allow such false testament to hurt you?’. Instead, he presses on.

“No, really.”

Whizzer shifts awkwardly, “My father kicked me out for being gay when I was a teen. I just gave a blowjob to a man who hadn’t washed his balls to buy a hotdog from 7-eleven. I can’t help but feel like God fucked me over, here.”

Marvin purses his lips, “That is not God’s doing. That is the flaws in humanity.”

“So, do you just get philosophical after 1 a.m., or what?” Whizzer says, flicking him a cheeky smile.

“You should see me at 2 a.m.,” he chirps, meeting Whizzer’s wit.

Whizzer seems to appreciate it and he travels a hand up Marvin’s inner thigh, “Do you wanna take me home?”

Marvin’s eyes glow softly in the dim light, to which Whizzer attributes the dull street lights to as an explanation.

“Follow me,” he says, taking Whizzer’s equally cold hand.

He can feel the warm glow of a bright, but already tainted soul. Passions of the body before marriage, and all that. Well, as far as Marvin could see, homosexual marriages weren’t becoming legal any time soon. The almighty Creator may just have to waver that one at the golden gates.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marvin and Whizzer's first night together. However, Marvin can feel an angel approaching and must send Whizzer away before he gets hurt.

Marvin watches the soft glow of the early morning sun as it reflects off the windows and sides of other apartment buildings and into his own through a crack in the curtains. He holds Whizzer’s sleeping body delicately in his arms. Tendrils of his demonic energy dance along the other’s skin and Marvin basks in the feeling of closeness to another being. Whizzer shifts and Marvin pulls his energy back into its human form in case he was filling the man’s head with evil visions. Much to his relief, Whizzer yawns into a sleepy smile and snuggles close to him again.

“Last night was heavenly,” he murmurs against Marvin’s chest.

Marvin laughs despite himself, “It was.”

Whizzer sighs happily and watches as Marvin travels his fingers along the smooth curve of Whizzer’s inner arm. It was as if he hadn’t covered every inch of his body in kisses just some hours ago.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Marvin says. He often forgot how humans bounced from one subject to another and that time in between such conversations often meant that the subject had to be brought up again. It made for some strange interactions. A few hours between conversations was nothing for an ancient being such as himself; his train of thought could sometimes span centuries.

Whizzer frowns, “What?” He had almost forgotten about how Marv and he met.

“Last night,” he explains, “You told me he kicked you out when you were younger. My father kicked me out, too.”

Whizzer sits up a little on his elbow, tilting his head to look at Marvin, “For being gay?”

“For not holding the same beliefs as him.”

Whizzer knew this was heavy stuff for only the first night together, but he felt like he could say these things to Marvin. Maybe this was how Catholics felt at a confessional booth. He didn’t want to jinx himself, but Whizzer was nothing if not eager to throw himself into relationships – sometimes with multiple people at a time if it benefited him.

A gust of wind makes Marvin shiver and it's then that he realizes all the windows in the apartment are closed. A sudden itch crawls underneath his skin like lice in his bloodstream and he grimaces. An angel was approaching; and there was only one being whose wrath and disapproval Marvin dreaded more than his Master's. He wasn't sure what this angel might do if they were to stumble upon Whizzer in bed with him.

“I’m sorry, dearest, but you need to go,” he says.

He had said those words many times before, but to say them to Whizzer hurt him more than he expected.

Whizzer blinks and shoots out of bed. He was no stranger to this dance. He knew all the steps with married men – one, maybe two nights together, but run along little faggot before the missus gets home. He curses himself for getting his hopes up on this one.

Marvin was dressed unexpectedly neatly and quickly for a minute or so post-sex clothes scramble. Of course, possessing magic was one of the few perks of being demonic, but Whizzer would never notice. Nor would he notice that somehow his clothes were magically in a pile for his convenience rather than scattered throughout the house.

“I’m sorry, I really am. It’s-“

Whizzer takes Marvin’s hands in his, brushing his thumb over the gold ring which resembled a wedding band, “It’s fine. I know.”

“I’d really like to see you again soon,” Marvin says. He enjoys one last kiss with Whizzer in the doorway to his apartment. He tasted like the fruit of Eden that was not so forbidden.

“I’d like that too,” he admits, “A lot.”

There was no need for Marvin to have a cell phone as most of the calls he made were of the séance or summoning type. Still, a cell phone manifests itself on his bedside table as if it had always been there. Marvin writes his newly acquired phone number down on to a piece of paper and slips it into Whizzer’s breast pocket. Whizzer pecks the short stubble on Marvin's cheek, mouths a farewell to him and with a brisk walk, sees himself out.


	3. Chapter 3

The atoms shift and give way, the very fabric of human reality bends and the clocks in the apartment skip forward by five seconds. Marvin grunts in discomfort as he’s forced out of his more suitable physical form and into another. Demons and Angels were a pure energy that existed outside of the processing of the human brain. The closest anyone ever came to depicting them was Van Gogh in his paintings. They were loud, yet unable to be detected, blindingly bright, but still existing within the shadows of peripheral vision. It was an inconvenience to lose his human form, to say the least.

The angel manifests herself in front of him, a pulsating form of light and sound waves that only few could comprehend. Marvin could see her beauty just as clearly as if they were still in Heaven together.

Her energy reaches out and inspects Marvin’s apartment. He can practically sense the huff of ‘I thought it would be nicer’.

Marvin pulls himself back together and glares at her with eyes that swim with colour.

“Are you quite done being almighty, yet, Trina?”

The angel, whose name had once been Dina, gives Marvin a disapproving look as she forms in front of him, “I can announce my arrival with trumpets if you prefer.”

He ignores her comment and stab at his heavenly profession. Marvin puffs out his wings similar to how birds do and brings his left one around so he can run his fingers through it to help shed any dead feathers, “If you were wondering, no, Reagan isn’t one of ours.”

“He’s not one of ours, either,” she says. She brings her hands up to inspect them and changes her nail polish to compliment her outfit.

There was a certain amount of understanding and respect between them. Like a defense attorney and a prosecutor, they may have been on different sides, but that didn’t mean they hated each other. A certain distaste, was more like it.

“There you are, then. Humans and free will,” he mutters.

Trina sighs. She had not spent enough time on earth to come to the same conclusion as Marvin had: that sometimes, bad things happened not because of Hell, but because people were people. That much was clear when she’d held him five stories above an Olympic pool and threatened to bless it and drop him in after the election of Hitler. In her eyes, Marvin was still the dumb, young angel who followed a handsome devil to his doom. And she was not so wrong about Marvin following handsome devils, either.

Marvin looks up from his grooming and sees her nervously clasp her hands together.

“Okay,” he grumbles, “I’ll ask. Why are you here?”

“Sometimes I get a feeling… like something bad is going to happen and the Creator hasn’t told us about it,” she admits, hugging her wings tight to her back.

Marvin snorts, “As if He tells us anything. I was stranded, clinging to a tree, when he decided to flood the whole world for forty days and forty nights, remember? Not even a heads up.”

“Yes, but you’re not exactly in the loop anymore.”

Marvin stretches his wings out with a small noise, “Thank you for the warning and the foreboding atmosphere you’ve just created, but I have other things to do.”

“Tempt some poor souls?”

“Much better than singing a thousand songs of praise up in the clouds dressed in a white sheet and carrying a harp,” he snaps.

Horns and tails, halos and harps, all things that artists had made up over the years. Though, the two never failed to not bring it up to annoy the other.

“Don’t. Start,” she warns. They were not going to have this argument again.

“Don’t blame me for the failings of humans.”

She groans, “You and your humans, Marvin. Always refusing to see the good in them; never acknowledging that they are better. I think it might actually physically hurt you to say that they were better than you.”

Marvin flicks his wings in irritation, “They are capable of much worse things than any demon conjure up. They are killing this world and you expect me to find good in them?”

“You certainly have with whoever was here. I can feel the energy of them.”

“ _Interest_ , not goodness,” Marvin corrects, “And am I not superior to them for having realized that evil is not to blame for th-“

“I refuse to have this chat with you again,” she grumbles. Annoyance underlies her words and she shakes her head, “I came here to possibly warn you. I see I’m not welcome.”

She spreads her wings and Marvin takes a step back from the force with which she unfurls them. Her holiness in that moment burns him. He grits his teeth and refuses to admit it to her.

“I’m right and you know it. You’re just afraid of The Fall.”

She disappears in a mighty roar of wind and reality snapping back in to the space she had occupied. Marvin snarls up at the ceiling after her. It does nothing but make him feel dumb.

Humans were flawed, imperfect; capable of greatness, yes, but also of terror.

He refused to bow down to such inferior creatures.

**Author's Note:**

> "He rather liked people. It was a major failing in a demon.  
> Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse."  
> -Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Good Omens)


End file.
